


you have your choices

by knightinbrightfeathers



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Character Study, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Magic, Motherhood, Not Canon Compliant, Past Abuse, Pre-Canon, Single Parents, not so much a fix-it as a cancel-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 13:21:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11014284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightinbrightfeathers/pseuds/knightinbrightfeathers
Summary: "I wonder if she's still here, in California. If she's got a family now. Maybe I'll run into her at Trader Joe's."Pregnant with Simon, Lucy decides to leave the Mage and escapes to California.





	you have your choices

**Author's Note:**

> As I said in the tags, this fic is not so much a fix-it as it is a cancel-it. In the immortal words of Mitali Bunce, "she finally realized he was a git and had to cross the ocean to get away from him." So the ENTIRE plot of Carry On is derailed. The Humdrum is never created because the spell is intrinsincally linked to Britain and British magic, and Simon is in California. The Mage never rises to power. Natsha Grimm never gets murdered by vampires. Baz probably has a nicer life.  
> All of this would probably require a massive, novel-length rewrite if I cared about anything else than Lucy's wellbeing and Simon's health and happiness. *shrugs*  
> The abuse mentioned in the tags is 100% Davy's behavior towards Lucy, because fuck that guy.  
> As always, thanks to rhien for the priceless beta work. I owe you so much Israeli chocolate.  
> Title from "Timshel" by Mumford and Sons.

_Maybe she’s raising him in the Normal world. Maybe that’s the gift Lucy Salisbury gave herself and her child—not to have to grow up with all this shit. Not to have the Mage as his dad, and a world at war for its inheritance._

 

-from Carry On

 

 

Nobody ever asks her, now, when she decided to leave (leave England, and him), but if they did, she wouldn’t know what to tell them.

(And why. Why she decided to leave. She can’t tell anyone that.)

Lucy’s memories of that time are mostly blurred around the ages, with time or with magic or with that same vague uncertainty that painted her life with Davy. Even so, she’s certain that there was no moment she could point at and say,  _ there, that’s the one. That’s when I decided to run away _ .

+

Driving back from dinner with Mitali and Martin, pressing her feet to the floor of the car and her bum to the seat, Lucy felt overwhelmingly helpless. It dominated everything else, her worry over Davy’s drunken angry driving and her annoyance at the tension during dinner and the way that Davy could never let things go, that Mitali could never have a simple conversation without bringing up politics. Watching the road racing up to her, she could only think,  _ this is what adulthood must be like. I have no control and everyone is so serious about everything. _

It’s the last time she sees her best friend, and she thinks that if she had known, she would have said something. Goodbye? I love you?

But that would have given her away.

+

Just like there was no precise moment when Lucy decided to Leave Davy (and it was Leave with a capital L, a dramatic decision straight out of a Normal film), so there was no moment when she realized that something was wrong.

She’d always wanted to travel. She wanted to go to Paris, or Barcelona, or even Dublin, and when she mentioned it to Davy, he’d act like nothing was as interesting as his work. As if Paris was all very well and good, but anyone with a brain could see that poring over endless manuscripts topped a stroll through Montmartre anytime. And Lucy didn’t – mind, precisely, except that surely Paris could be a possibility. One day. He seemed so determined that their life never venture out of its small sphere, as if a weekend trip somewhere interesting would rupture that sphere and let all the air out.

She never saw anyone from school anymore, she realized one day. Except she thought of school as her “old life.” She was nineteen. There was no room in her life for an additional her, a past abandoned and forgotten.

She’d liked rugby at Watford. She’d had friends. She’d been good at sports and decent at everything else. She’d had a life. A school life, but surely married life didn’t confine you to your room like a naughty toddler?

All these things were so easily dismissible. Lucy shoved them down deep.

+

“He hit my baby girl,” says a woman with unfashionable glasses and a burn on her right arm. “She didn’t do him any harm, you know? He said I brought it out in him and it was my fault he hit me, and I believed him. But my Jenny never hurt him. She was a perfect angel.”

Lucy nods and rests a hand on her belly. It’s been a while since Simon was in there, but these words have taken her back to her pregnancy. Simon isn’t the only reason she left, but somehow she knew that Davy wasn’t good for her boy. What warned her to take the baby inside her and run? The obsessive way he spoke of an unborn child as a magical phenomenon? A mother’s instinct? Some deep-down conviction that he wouldn’t love their child for itself?

Lucy is sure now that Davy never really wanted a baby. He wanted a miracle, a Holy Grail, not a child that cries and vomits. Not a child that wipes his sticky hands on things and brings home interesting pebbles he found.

+

Her day starts with a sleepy child, who will never be a morning person and constantly needs to be reminded that he’s awake. Teeth are brushed and shoes are velcroed on, which fascinates Simon every time. Curls are halfheartedly tamed down in his case, and spelled neat in hers, and then breakfast happens. Simon approaches food with a solemnity atypical to such a young child who has never gone hungry. He isn’t picky exactly, but he is very clear on what is good and what isn’t.

This week, Coco Puffs are a good thing, so Lucy ignores the sugar content and eats her own toast. Then they pack lunch together, with Simon standing on a stool and watching her preside over the spells that peel and slice and wrap up their food. Then the last minute rush for anything left behind and they’re out the door, on their way to daycare and work, respectively.

It’s a routine nearly identical to the ones in every other flat on their block, but it’s theirs. There’s happiness tucked into everything they do together. Sometimes Lucy thinks there’s something very deliberate about that happiness for her, in all the ways it’s different from what she would have had, had she not left. In the way she has brought this happiness on herself.

But then Simon grins at her with a mouth full of half-chewed cereal, or pats Mr. Fluff the stuffed dog on the head before packing him in his backpack, and everything fades in comparison to how deeply she loves him.

This is how Lucy creates happiness now: deliberately, measuredly, everything tempered. But oh, how she’s happy.

+

Although she can’t remember when she made the decision to leave Davy, Lucy remembers the constant deliberation once she’d decided. How far should she go? What would she do? Where should she stay?

She went into town on a day Davy was away and bought a ticket to San Diego for a day he had a meeting. She had no money to pay for it, no magic to turn paper into cash. But confusing the travel agent into giving her a ticket was such an easy spell, one she'd used to fool her mother many times before. And she was desperate.

The baby kicked, and Lucy went  _ oof. _

“Everything all right, dear?” the agent asked, and Lucy said yes, of course, and mustered up the last bits of that day's energy and her own failing magic and drew her wand. It must have been a good day, or maybe the baby was on her side. The spell worked. 

She had a bad morning the next day, could hardly sit up. Davy carried her outside for fresh air, laid her out on the warm earth and she couldn't tell him that it was hurting her. Sucking out her insides, leaving her hollow. Davy clucked over her, and she smiled. Lied. Said she was fine.

It was clear to her that she couldn’t tell Davy. Couldn’t count on him for help. She couldn’t count on anyone for help, really, because he could find her through them. Davy had no scruples in the pursuit of what he truly believed in, and he would be very, very angry when he found out that she was gone.

+

At Heathrow, she was young enough and pregnant enough to attract looks. Now, she thinks that it was her obvious fear as much as her large belly that drew attention. And there was that strange detachment she felt in England, when she lost her magic and felt sucked dry. Even the flight attendants came over to make sure that she was all right, and she had to reassure them as well as herself. Yes, she was feeling well. Yes, she was traveling alone. No, she was meeting someone in America (she lied). Her – sister. Yes.

They were in the air, about ten minutes into the flight, when something inside her came loose. Instant relief flooded her through the nausea. The flight attendant brought her ginger ale and smiled at her, obviously satisfied that Lucy was feeling better.

By the time the plane landed, Lucy’s magic had returned.

+

Lucy works at an advertising office these days, which is definitely not something her teachers would have chosen for her.

She’s a powerful magician. It would be so easy to find a magical job, but when she arrived in America she was convinced that Davy would be able to find her that way. Now she knows that American magicians hardly notice the rest of the world, just like American Normals. She doesn’t avoid magicians, but she doesn’t go looking for them, either.

There’s not much time to go out drinking with coworkers when you’re a single mother. Lucy has time to herself very rarely: when Simon’s on a playdate and after he’s gone to bed. On Friday mornings he has a karate class at the Y, and she has group therapy sessions in the back room of Beth Shalom Temple. She’s been going on and off since Simon was old enough to go an hour without her.. 

Davy never beat or forced himself on her, but he did other things that hurt her, and that harm is something the women in her group are all too familiar with. It’s the one place she feels safe enough to talk about Davy. She won’t even tell Simon about him, on the rare occasions he asks. There’s time yet, and he’s too young to understand.

In all honesty, Lucy isn’t sure she understands Davy herself. Life with Davy didn’t seem strange or wrong until she’d left the country, crossed the Atlantic, and changed her name. Only then did she realize that those were not normal things to do. Now she looks back and can’t even understand her own reasoning back then.

The thing about life with Davy was that everything else fell away at first. And then it came leaking back in. It wasn’t as if his charisma, his passion, and the feelings she had for him disappeared. They just weren’t enough anymore.

+

They are hand in hand at the beach, Simon barefoot in the sand and digging his toes in at every step. Lucy is carrying both their sandals and periodically pushes hair away from her eyes with her wrist. 

“Micah, stop that!” someone shouts. A woman with wild black hair runs up to a pair of children. The younger, a toddler in an ice-cream stained smock, is busy with a bucket and spade, piling up sand. A little boy about Simon’s age sitting next to her is squinting fiercely at the mound, which is slowly becoming a lopsided castle.

The woman with the wild hair, coming to a stop by the pair, squats down to look him in the eye. “I told you not to do magic around the Normals,” she whispers, and then notices Lucy and Simon looking on.

“It’s quite all right,” Lucy says, because the woman looks like she’s about to pull a wand from her pocket and hex them both into forgetfulness. She and Simon come up to the little group, and Lucy smiles at the woman. “That’s a very advanced spell for his age.”

The woman’s face instantly relaxes. “Yes, he’s very precocious, but not very obedient.”

“I know how it is. This one gets into everything,” Lucy says, tousling Simon’s curls. “A regular locksmith.”

“I’m Silvia,” says the woman, and offers her hand to shake. “This one is Alma, and the rascal is Micah.”

“Lucy. And this is Simon.”

“I thought we knew everyone magical around here,” Silvia says. “Are you new? You sound British.”

“I am. I came here a few years ago, actually. But I haven’t had much time to meet people.”

“Well, you’ve met someone now,” Silvia says.

+

Lucy doesn’t know what ‘old enough’ means. How do you quantify ‘enough’?

But old enough to get your own wand is old enough to learn about your father, so Lucy sits her son down and tells him about his father. Not everything, and she’s careful with what she does say. She doesn’t want Simon to think that he’s some kind of experiment, created by a spell and an obsessive fanatic.

He’s so smart, her boy. He listens and asks questions that she does her best to answer. She doesn’t know what Davy is doing nowadays, or if he’s still looking for them. She fervently hopes not.

She might cry a little when Simon asks for a hug. She thinks he understands, as much as he can and should at the tender age of ten. Then he goes off to play. He’s no savior of the Wizarding World. He’s just a boy.

Her boy.


End file.
